State of the GreenPower Ecosystem – Q & A
Telegram Michael Mathias 2021-05-17 Monday (pdf)
CCH: comments CryptoChemist.net
There have been some significant events happening within our ecosystem. The following is aimed at increasing our community’s understanding of all that’s occurred.
What’s changing about our ecosystem?
The primary change is that the amount of decentralization is increasing. Decentralization is the foundation of autonomy, a bedrock of efficiency and the key to long-term sustainability. It has always been one of the primary objectives of this ecosystem. It was a core part of the original design of our ecosystem and its role will now expand as our community of token holders becomes more empowered through the introduction of a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).
What do you mean by “decentralization”?
The concept of “decentralization” can be found in technology as well as many other fields, including business and politics. Basically, it means that there is no central authority that has control over a system. Instead, the control of the system is distributed among the participants. Decentralized systems are designed to avoid the abuses of power by central authorities, but they come with additional costs to the participants, including the need for participants to take on some of the responsibilities themselves.
CCH: the key word … responsibility!
How decentralized has the ecosystem been?
From the start, our ecosystem has functioned as an alliance. Member entities have worked together to deliver on cooperative business strategies, without the process being managed by a central authority. It began as four separate companies located in four different countries, each individually owned and operated by separate management teams. From there, additional companies were added as the ecosystem grew. (Companies have also been removed when their objectives no longer aligned with the other alliance member companies.)
CCH:
DasCoin – DasCoin Ltd, Hong Kong – Michael Mathias, CEO
DasFinancial – DasFinancial AG, Switzerland – Terry O’Hearn, Executive Chairman
WebWallet – WebWallet Pte Ltd, Singapore – George Sarcevich, Director
NetLeaders – CL Singapore Pte Ltd, Singapore – John Pretto, Director
What’s the purpose of the ecosystem’s structure?
This decentralized alliance of companies was designed to provide flexibility, resilience, and sustainability over the long-term.
What are the benefits of the ecosystem’s structure?
A decentralized global alliance is well-suited for the long-term operation of a blockchain-based ecosystem. Thanks to its structure, our ecosystem has weathered many storms, including market shifts, network attacks, wallet breaches, smear campaigns, regulatory misunderstandings, rogue developers, renegade alliance members and subversive community members, as well as series of strategic pivots. Through it all, the structure of our ecosystem has held strong and continues to endure.
What are the challenges of the ecosystem’s structure?
The structure has also created several difficulties, particularly in the realm of operations management. More centralized management structures (such as a single business entity) allow for more rapid and decisive decision-making, and give participants in the system a sense of clarity about the rules and their own roles. Also, there are usually established protocols for enforcing those rules. However, as a decentralized alliance, many decisions need to be mutually agreed upon by the management teams of the different alliance member companies. At times, this has proved to be exceedingly difficult, since these are autonomous business entities based in different jurisdictions and there has been no formal mechanism for making centralized decisions. Consequently, it’s been extremely challenging for the alliance to execute on many of its cooperative business strategies. Strategic misalignments between member entities ended up producing a series of negative outcomes, including inefficiencies, misallocation of resources, missed opportunities, failed deliveries, unfulfilled objectives and unsuccessful initiatives.
How does the PowerDAO resolve these challenges?
With the creation the PowerDAO, the ecosystem will now have an appropriately decentralized decision-making mechanism. Voting by members of the PowerDAO on community-generated proposals can effectively consolidate certain ecosystem decisions, and thereby help to clarify and unify business strategies among the alliance’s member entities. The presence of this decision-making mechanism should resolve existing governance issues and improve performance results, while at the same time increasing the degree of decentralization within the ecosystem.
CCH: Increasing decentralization Yes, but will have the “crowd” … vision?
How will this happen?
After the recent community referendum, the participants of the Final Swap Period are now staking their GRN within the MVault system. They have also received 
GovernancePower (GOV) tokens, and these will play a primary role in the operation of the PowerDAO’s community voting system. In the Proposals section of the MVault system, holders of GOV will soon be able to vote on proposals based on the weighting of their respective holdings. This will provide timely decisions from the community and will clear the way for some very exciting possibilities.
How will things change for individual community members?
There is a substantial shift in the power dynamics of our ecosystem. Each token holder in the DAO will take on some of the power that was previously held by alliance member companies. This means community members need to take extra steps they wouldn’t have had to take previously. Consequently, our community members will need to be increasingly more selfdirected. Success or failure will now be dependent on the decisions of our community members rather than on decisions made by the management teams of the alliance’s member companies.
CCH: that’s how it is … hmmm … democracy … but I’m not convinced of the quality of decisions made in this way and the number of people who will want to get involved. Most went into the system for something else and with no system-wide attitude. The upside is that the weight of the decision depends on the amount of coins you have, as I understand GovernancePower (GOV).
Will this shift need to happen all at once?
No, this process can happen gradually. At the community member level, the MVault system has been designed to start out as a centralized user experience with off-chain voting, and then will offer opportunities to gradually transition to a more decentralized and self-directed user experience (ultimately integrating a decentralized non-custodial wallet). During previous years when interaction with the original wallet system required the use of a hardware device (CCH: Validator), it became clear that there is a significant learning curve to operating in a more decentralized manner. MVault is specifically designed for this purpose and will provide a series of tools to help every community member make a smooth and gradual transition.
How does MVault fit into the new ecosystem structure?
The MVault system is in the process of becoming part of the PowerDAO, and will be operated by its members. The PowerDAO is in the final stage of its formal establishment, and more details will be share about it in the upcoming weeks.
Where’s the roadmap?
A new roadmap will not be published until the token holders formally agree (through the DAO voting mechanism) on a series of important decisions for the ecosystem. The former roadmap is no longer valid due to the emergence of the ecosystem’s new governance model.
When will community start voting on proposals?
Voting is expected to begin in June once the proposals system has been integrated into MVault and the first proposals are ready for submission to the community. The proposals system, which was expected to be completed by the end of this month, is taking slightly longer than anticipated to deliver. Due to the hybrid structure of MVault, the proposals system cannot make use of existing voting system frameworks and must be developed from scratch.
What are the first decisions the community will make?
The first decision will be to choose the basic operating protocol of the PowerDAO. Once that’s established, the community will vote to adopt an official direction for the ecosystem and will then begin authorizing near-term strategic objectives and their associated initiatives.
What are the possible directions for our ecosystem?
Maintain Current Course: We can certainly choose to continue on the existing path, which features the membership token model for GRN, introduces a new native token ( 
PWR) for the Powerchain and focuses on delivering blockchain-based loyalty points and customer referral programs. The transaction capacity, block speed, cost efficiency and asset management strengths of the Powerchain make it ideal for the micro-transactions that are so prevalent within for these applications. There is also a heritage of referral marketing within our community that can likely be harnessed to power the growth of a system with this type of focus.
Rewards Protocol for Decentralized Web: Another option would be to choose to pursue a different format of rewards, such as rewards designed to incentivize the build out and adoption of applications on the decentralized web.
Emerging Areas: We can also consider entirely new directions that leverage the strengths of Powerchain 2.0. With relatively minor modifications, our blockchain can be customized to create solutions within emerging industry areas, such as the fast-growing realm of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). There is also movement happening in a market segment I describe as “DeMar” for Decentralized Marketing (which is not “a thing” yet but is likely to become one over the next few years). This would involve applying the principles of decentralization to realms of marketing. As most of you know, the same dynamic has already been applied to the realm of finance and has quickly gained traction over the past year, and is now known as “DeFi”. The market is evolving quickly so there are many emerging areas that can be considered for future application of the Powerchain technology. There are also emerging structural themes to consider.
New Variants on Past Pursuits: There are also some in the community who are interested to pursue fresh angles on directions that have been previously explored in our ecosystem, including payments (like 
DasPay / 
AlliancePay), crowdsourced financing ( 
Das33) and marketplaces (DasMarket). While there are important reasons behind why these initiatives didn’t succeed at earlier points in the ecosystem’s history, new possibilities for success may exist by approaching these concepts in innovative ways or with more decentralized strategies.
CCH: This point interested me. Maybe because of the sentiment to what I was building, what I believed in, what I had in my hand and what I used, i.e. DasPay. Direct 
DasCoin payment, using the MasterCard in the AlliancePay system. Impressions unforgettable. Das33, i.e. crowdfunding, also interests me (us, because there are more of us). We already have several projects planned. That is why we are also considering tokenization in the 
ZENIQ & 
Safir project.
Base Layer: There is also the option to focus on the expansion of the Powerchain as a Layer 1 platform solution, rather than pursue Layer 2 protocols or Layer 3 applications. Regardless of which layer is focused on, decisions can be made to made to add or alter Layer 1 aspects of the Powerchain before launching Powerchain 2.0, including changing its consensus mechanism or making its node architecture more decentralized.
CCH: it is for specialists, IT specialists and programmers. Could a mass GRN token holder be interested in it?
How can ideas for ecosystem direction be contributed?
Ideas can be brought up publicly on the Telegram channel or sent privately to any admin on our Telegram channel. There seemed to be confusion about this community exercise in recent days on our channel, and we ended up with more “referees” than “players” during those discussions. No need to overanalyze. Let’s just have an open discussion of ideas and potential directions. Perhaps in the time that’s left before the start of community voting, these conversations will end up being more productive. Hopefully, additional contributions will also be sent via private messages to the Admin team.
How will proposals be presented to the community?
Our Proposals Committee (which will be initially comprised of the current admin team from our Telegram channel) will work alongside individual contributors to help structure submitted proposals into a digestible format that the community can vote on. Once the format of a proposal has been finalized, it will be scheduled for publication to the MVault system.
How is the community expected to evaluate the proposals?
Each community member can review each proposal and make an evaluation prior to voting. My suggestion is that we work together to apply a decision-making framework to each proposal, such as doing a classic SWOT analysis:
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
I will publish an example of a SWOT analysis later this week (on Wednesday) in which I apply this framework to the original proposal each of us was responsible for evaluating prior to making our decision to become part of this community: the NetLeaders license proposal. Be sure to look for that as it will also provide a lot of insight into important structural aspects of the ecosystem.
What other considerations are helpful in determining future direction?
Timing: As it relates to market dynamics, timing is another important consideration. Based on the intervals of the previous five cycles in the blockchain/crypto industry over the past 12 years, a bear market is likely to occur anytime in the next 0-9 months. When that occurs, based on those past five cycles, the bear market is likely to last approximately 12 months before a growth period resumes. This kind of cyclical data is important for all of us to keep in mind when determining the ecosystem’s direction.
Anticipation: Given the cycles of the wider market, it’s also very important for us to think in terms of where the market is going (in 12-18 months), rather than chase what’s hot in the market right now. I realize that this is not easy to do, but it’s worthwhile to keep in mind as we are determining our future direction. While it certainly makes sense for us to understand the current trends of the market, a particularly valuable exercise is to try to glean where those trends are heading.
Process: When we focus only on external achievement and forget to honor the process, we become like Icarus, from Greek mythology. Icarus wanted to fly to the sun, and so he constructed a pair of giant wings made of wax. They were enormous and beautiful wings which he strapped to his arms. Then, like a modern hang glider, he launched off a cliff and soared on the currents of the wind, flying closer and closer to the sun. But he was ill-prepared and didn’t realize that approaching the sun would cause his wings to melt. Suddenly Icarus fell to the ocean and would end up being washed to shore. What Icarus forgot was that we make it to the sun, or to any destination, by taking one step at a time in a process that is appropriate to the goal. Icarus was so focused on the desire to dazzle others with his finished achievement, that he ended up devaluing the process.
What are the biggest challenges facing our community?
#1: Lack of understanding. Not just a lack of technical understanding about our industry, but also a lack of understanding about our history together and about each other. Wherever there’s an absence of understanding, false assumptions and speculative information gain influence and cause misunderstandings. The result is an abundance of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
#2: Resistance to accepting responsibility. For our personal decisions, for our delegated decisions, and for the decisions made by those to whom we have delegated our personal authority. Denial of responsibility for our decisions is disempowering. Viewing ourselves through a lens of victimization stifles growth and prevents success.
CCH: I agree: denial of responsibility for our decisions is disempowering!
CCH: Putting yourself in the victim position does not lead to goal and success.
#3: Rapid pace of change. Not just in the blockchain industry, but in many other aspects of our lives. The accelerating rate of change makes the world increasingly more difficult to understand and more hazardous to navigate. The pressure to stay on top of developments creates endless demands for our attention and leads to a chronic depletion of energy.
What is the ecosystem’s most significant development so far in 2021?
The completion of the GRN swap to Ethereum and the launch of MVault have been important, but in my opinion the most significant development so far this year is the creation of a Swiss association for GRN holders. This is something that hasn’t been announced until now, and will have an enormously positive impact on our community. Separate from the formation of the PowerDAO, this is a Swiss association that is being formed to legally represent the interests of all GRN token holders. Once its formation has been finalized, this Swiss association will have a membership base of nearly 100,000 and will begin acting on behalf of the interests of its members.
CCH: The association has strength in itself, but again it depends on the commitment of individual members and the activities of the Association’s Board. Overall it’s a good move.
Why is having a GRN Association so important?
With the legal standing provided through this Swiss association, our community will soon begin pursuing aggressive legal action to recover assets that were stolen or are currently being illegally held. These losses are the result of crimes that include multiple incidents of digital wallet attacks and the misappropriation of funds and have occurred in various jurisdictions around the world. While some of these assets will never be recovered, more than $20 million worth of these assets are likely recoverable. As part of the recovery efforts, criminal cases will be filed against former consultants, former developers, former marketers, former vendors, former legal counsel (& their associated professional teams) and two centralized exchanges – all of which have committed crimes against this community. In addition, upon authorization by the membership, the association will also seek to be formally involved with existing court proceedings against the national office of a European-based consumer protection agency in an effort to recover substantial funds belonging to our community that have been illegally held by authorities for over three years.
Why weren’t these matters pursued previously?
Until the formation of this Swiss association of GRN token holders, it has been nearly impossible to pursue justice in these cases due to a lack of legal standing that results from the ecosystem operating as a decentralized alliance. Not only was there no ability to properly address these crimes through normal judicial avenues, but there were also no channels to make legally appropriate disclosures to the community. The primary issue has been that there wasn’t an entity with legal standing that was sufficiently representative of the parties that were most harmed by these crimes (i.e., the GRN holders). Thankfully, however, the formation of a Swiss association comprised of the majority of the GRN holders provides an ideal solution. The result of our recent community referendum has opened the way to organize the majority of GRN holders (consolidated through the MVault system) into a formalized Swiss association, which in turn gives our community of GRN token holders proper legal standing. The consolidation of holders through MVault and the subsequent formation of the Swiss association successfully resolves a legal predicament that has plagued our ecosystem for the past three years.
What are the next steps regarding the GRN Association?
Once the formation of the association has been completed, a formal disclosure of details of relevant community matters will be shared with all members of GRN association directly through the MVault system. The members of the GRN Association will also be accessing the voting mechanism through the MVault system to vote on proposals related specifically to the matters pertaining to GRN holders.
What other information will be shared with the community this week?
There will be two more important documents posted this week:
WEDNESDAY: SWOT Analysis: On Wednesday, I will be sharing a detailed SWOT analysis of some of the relevant factors that needed to be evaluated prior to making a decision about the original NetLeaders license proposition. While this document is meant to provide an illustration of the types of factors that need to be considered in making a decision about the direction of the ecosystem, it will also have the added benefit of giving some insight into the structural dynamics of our ecosystem.
FRIDAY: GRN Association Announcement Letter: On Friday, I will publish a letter that will officially notify our community about the creation of the GRN Association and will also provide an extensive overview of the dynamics of the most important incidents that have occurred in our ecosystem between 2018-2021. This will provide answers to many questions that have been circulating within our community that could never get properly addressed due considerations related to the decentralized structure of our ecosystem. The deepest details will not be provided until the formal mechanisms of the GRN Association are available in the MVault system (for legal reasons). However, there will be plenty of information provided on Friday that will connect dots for many in the community about what happened and why it happened during the past three years.
Thank You
Thanks so much for your attention! Please plan to review the documents that will be published on Wednesday 2021-05-19 SWOT Analysis (NetLeaders License) and Friday 2021-05-21 GRN Association. Letter part 1 which will share more insight and information about our ecosystem.
Michael Mathias